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Outstanding
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Publishers Weekly
Stuart offers a masterful social and cultural history of a movement that changed the ways people think about the food they eat. [30 Oct 2006, p.47]
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Outstanding
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San Francisco Chronicle Michael O'Donnell
A beautifully written work of impressive scholarship, perhaps the most erudite yet to appear on the subject of vegetarian history.
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Outstanding
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The Independent Chandak Sengoopta
A wonderful book, crammed with original research and written with verve, wit and passion. The most enthralling work of cultural history I have read in years, it brings out the political, ethical and environmental implications of our dietary choices without any preachiness.
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Outstanding
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The Observer Jonathan Beckman
The brilliance of Stuart's book is to demonstrate that the study of attitudes towards food is the gateway to appreciating how people understood their place in society, their relationship to their environment and the significance of being human.
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Favorable
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The Economist
With the balance of an easy style and comprehensive, if discreet, research, he avoids most of the pitfalls of popular histories in which seeming ephemera take centre stage. Thankfully too, those other singularly vegetarian dangers -- preachiness and a copious flow of hot air -- could not be less in evidence.
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Favorable
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The Independent A C Grayling
Stuart writes with flair and intelligence, and this debut shows that he is destined to be a luminous presence in his literary generation.
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Favorable
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Booklist Mark Knoblauch
Marvelously researched, deeply revealing, minutely considered history of vegetarianism. [15 Nov 2006, p.14]
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Favorable
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Kirkus Reviews
Culinary and cultural history intertwined: readable, and endlessly interesting. [15 Oct 2006, p.1061]
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Favorable
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Village Voice Lenora Todaro
Scholarly and at times colorful, The Bloodless Revolution follows the tides of vegetarian thought as one generation influences the next, but it also gets at what it means to be human, part of something larger than oneself.
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Favorable
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Washington Post Mark Kurlansky
Both scholarly and entertaining, The Bloodless Revolution is a huge feast of ideas -- ideas from India and France and America, from ancient Greece and Thoreau and Emerson, from Rousseau, Hobbes, the Kabbalah, the Old Testament, Descartes and Darwin, to name just a few of the better-known sources that weigh in on the meatless diet.
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Favorable
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The Guardian Kevin Rushby
Stuart's closing call for us "to reduce our consumption of meat" is not new either, but his book is a welcome reminder of why such a call is more important than ever.
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Favorable
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Slate Laura Shapiro
In the realm of pure thought, [Stuart] certainly proves his case. But if the most ardent advocates of bloodless eating shrank back in dismay when the bean loaf came around, it seems doubtful that ordinary folk greeted it any more enthusiastically.
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Favorable
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The New York Times Book Review Edward Rothstein
The book would have been still more pungent had it tried to do less, organized itself with more rigor and not placed so many piquant findings in such obscure niches.
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Favorable
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Boston Globe Michael Kammen
This is not a book for every taste, but it goes well with tea and sympathy -- and time, a prime requisite.
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Mixed
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The Nation Daniel Lazare
Intelligent, readable, if ultimately unsatisfying.
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Mixed
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The Spectator Anthony Daniels
Like many people who undertake lengthy and painstaking research into arcane subject matter, Stuart tends to exaggerate its importance. [2 Sept 2006]
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Unfavorable
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Salon Laura Miller
In truth, The Bloodless Revolution does a little bit of all of these things, but in a scattered, partial and confusing way that mostly just frustrates the reader looking for a thoughtful history of vegetarianism.
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